Echo

As you climb to the second floor of Kane Hall, Jeffrey Simmons' Echo, a circular painting 11 feet in diameter, rises like a moon over the stairway railing and dramatically takes command of the hallway by the Walker Ames Room. A common (and reasonable) complaint about abstract painting is I don't understand it, but in this case there isnt really anything to understand. Native Ohioan and current Seattleite Simmonstaking his taking his cues from the high-minded fabulousness of 60s-era pop, op, and color-field paintingspecializes in immediate visual appeal. Thin bands of color at starting at either pole of the painting become darker the closer they get to the center, where the build-up abruptly ends in a wide blank space. Distinct from each other when seen up close, the bands of color blend from a distance into a series of shimmering green-to-orange and orange-to-blue gradients. Echo (painted in 2000 and donated to the University by Greg Kucera and Larry Yocum) has a coolly precise look, but Simmons slyly leaves in some lumpiness as evidence of his accumulative process. A drip pattern visible under the acrylic paint is basically a stain on raw canvas, he says, which becomes progressively more obscure as the layers of paint get denser and darker. DAVID STOESZ